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On casino question, let the people decide

The public can say “No” only so many times before succumbing to the weight of history and the press of those advocating for change, good or bad.

So, I know that to propose a referendum on the issue of a casino in Toronto is to capitulate to those who subscribe to what one resident last week called “this monstrous evil” of state-sanctioned gambling.

Still, I think that’s where we are as a society, circa 2013: agnostic, amoral, materialistic, amorphous, almost anything goes.

Riding a backlash against centuries of Puritanism and uptight strictures, we’ve turned nullifidian, consumers of everything to the exclusion of nothing.

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I disqualified myself from the casino debate at the outset, distrustful of my instincts here. I have no inclination to gamble, and even less tolerance for those who would woo the weak to part with their money so cavalierly, so ruinously.

And yet, increasingly, more of us gamble away our tiny fortunes and our loonies and twoonies. between scratch and win, lotto this and that, ProLine and bingo, slots at Woodbine and games at the Ex, and bus trips late into the night to Rama and Niagara, many Canadians embrace gambling like a cup of coffee from Tim’s.

The majority tell pollsters they are against a downtown casino, but the gap between yes and no is trending the other way.

My opposition is surely rooted in a lifelong indoctrination against the evils of gambling. It’s an excellent example of poor stewardship. Nothing presented by advocates — the jobs, the fun, the matter of choice, the revenues, and the claims of economic stimulus — has managed to trump the words of prohibition.

To attend the public hearing before the city’s executive committee last week was to feel enlightened one minute and despairing the next. Who is correct, when the claims are so diametrically opposed?

The city is to get a fee for hosting the casino? But is it $20 million or $50 million? And will city councillors really hold out for $100 million? Or is that a ruse — “Look, we fought real hard!” — but they’ll fold in the end?

To listen to the police chief was to believe that casinos are benign operations with infinitesimal impact on prostitution, drug trafficking and other crimes. Believe what you wish and ignore scientific studies that show casinos account for 8 per cent of the crime in U.S. counties where they exist.

The mayor threatened city councillors whose consciences inform them that programs built on the backs of addicts and weak-willed citizens lack a certain ring of civic authenticity. He’ll make sure voters know such councillors turned their backs on the jobs, blood money, that flow with them — thousands of jobs, the mayor promises.

And all the while, the creepy-crawly lobbyists of the gambling cartel, many of them otherwise employed in reputable endeavours, coax city councillors to line the pockets of their corporate masters while chasing crumbs for the public purse.

A hundred buses a day leave Toronto with gamblers bound for casinos, the mayor claimed. A million and a half people in the city gamble, he said.

Councillor Denzil Minan-Wong, normally a bedfellow to the crowd drunk on such filthy lucre, professes religion on this one. Casinos are “one of the most depressing places” and they don’t fit the Toronto he dreams of.

“You are not playing with a full deck to turn this down,” said Deputy Mayor Doug Holyday.

The anticipated $100 million in “hosting fees is unattainable” and even that amount is “can’t leverage transit” construction, Councillor Adam Vaughan said.

To let the revenues go to a border city would be to deliver social problems “on the backs of our 2.5 million people, and we get no revenues,” Holyday concluded.

So, for 30 pieces of silver . . . sell out your constituents.

Maybe the constituents are okay with that, content with self-immolation on the altar of the jackpot. Besides, both sides are so entrenched, locked in a winner-take-all sweepstakes, with the draw scheduled at city council in a couple of weeks.

On this one, let the people decide in a referendum. It’ll be their party; they can cry if they want to.

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